The Warren Buffett Bridge Cup is a challenge match between twelve American and twelve European top players. It’s format is three way: individual, pairs and teams. The idea of a transatlantic match was born in 1930 when the team of Ely Culbertson won against Walter Buller. Three years later there was a second match, the Schwab Trophy: Culbertson team (again) defeated Colonel H. M. Beasley. The Cup shined again in 2006, thanks to Mr. Buffett, and since then the event had been held every two years, until 2012.
The 2014 edition originally was scheduled to take place in Gleneagles (Scotland), but later replaced by the Principality of Monaco. The participation of bridge superstars was annouced as well: Weinstein-Levin and Rodwell-Meckstroth for North-America and Helgemo-Helness and Fantoni-Nunes – all four Monagask residence – for Europe. However Paul Hackett, organiser of the event, announced at NewInBridge that the Buffett Cup was cancelled.
This is the explanation provided by Jean-Charles Allavena, President of Monaco Bridge Federation:
First, and this is probably the cause of this situation, last year, when Paul Hackett came to Pierre Zimmermann and myself to present his project of organizing the Buffett Cup in Monaco, I discovered that Mr. Buffett only gave his name to the Trophy, but not even 1 USD! Strange situation, but we had to deal with it.
Then, Pierre agreed to contribute to the financial costs. Paul is right when he says that the only thing that we wanted was a really strong American team, in order to have a high-level match, a true promotion for bridge, and we wouldn’t have accepted a team like the one USA sent to China last December.
Co-captains Jill Levin and Warren Spector made good efforts, and the result was impressive, all the US stars were on the list! We started working here, found a wonderful location to host the event, which would have been the best Monaco could offer.
At this point, I heard from Bob Hamman first, from Jill Levin later, that the USBF had refused to subsidise the airplane tickets for the US team. As no American sponsor showed willingness to finance the event, this clearly meant that we had to forget the project. Paul renewed his efforts, but was unsuccessful, which does not happen often to him, so the cancellation is confirmed. However I said to Paul that we keep the door open, because this is not a very difficult event to organize.
Anyway, and we come back to the beginning, the situation is strange because the “namer” of the Cup does not support it, the USBF does not want to support it, no US sponsors show any interest.
All this seems to confirm what has emerged from our Cavendish since 2012: it is nearly impossible to have American players in a non-American event. It is sad but we have to live with this! Let me finish with some thanks, to Paul Hackett for his efforts, to Pierre Zimmermann for his love of bridge and passion to support new events, to Jill Levin and Warren Spector for the great US team they had found. I hope to see all of you soon!
Jean-Charles Allavena
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Laura Camponeschi
Read statement from USBF about Buffett Cup »